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What ails the Indian society?

After India had gained independence, we never knew what we must do with our new found freedom. We had lived in captivity for almost 600 years. We never knew what it is to be free. Our leaders who had fought tooth and nail for our freedom told us that democracy would be the best option. We had stepped into the shoes of the British, but we were not comfortable in those shoes. Our leaders told us that we must have another system. They proposed democracy wedded to socialism. They advocated state ownership of industry, while there was no industry. They had proposed an economic system based on state ownership of capital, while there was no capital. Soon we realized they had fooled us.

We began electing only those parties that were willing to pay us for our votes. We did not want to know who they are and whether they would be able to rule us. The party we chose made hay while the sun shines. They lead us along the blind alley and when the realization downed on us we discovered that it was already too late.

Why we Indians are such a gullible lot? I have done some analysis and have made some startling discoveries. Firstly, we do not know where we keep our minds. Secondly, we assume that we are very knowledgeable. Why do we think we are knowledgeable? This is because we have all our knowledge in the scriptures. We only know it, but we have never experienced it. To give a small example whenever we heard about flying machines we said we already had it because our scriptures say so. Whenever we hear about rockets, we said our ancestors had already used them during the Great War depicted in our epics. Even Einstein's theory of relativity is there in our scriptures. If it is so, then why we never applied that knowledge? Others became wise, but why we did not become as wise as they are.

We live in a state of complacency. We ever live with a type of sense of defeatism. We have some weird sort of ideas. For an example, we are ever satisfied in a kind of state we are living in. We never think that there could be better ways of doing things. We have been taught to live within our limited means. We want to do nothing to advance in life.

We take pride that we have one of the biggest constitution in the world. All the laws it contains are enshrined in its chapters. We never attempted to write those laws neither in our minds nor on our hearts. Whenever we find that a crime has been perpetrated we either ask for an amendment, or ask for the enactment of new law. It is only making our constitution larger and bigger. We do not realize that the size of the constitution is the indicator of our morals. Bigger the constitution the littler are our morals would be. Smaller the constitution the greater would be our morals. It is the same with scripture. Large and lengthy scriptures do not make us spiritual. The large number of scriptures denotes how less spiritual we are.

All we must do is to stop aping the west. You must stop being dependent on others. The least we can do is to become honest. You must stop being selfish. Do not aspire for wealth in excess to your needs. Distribute whatever you produce between yourself and consume only what you produce. Stop hankering after foreign goods, but develop a quality in the goods you produce. Elect the right people to rule you. Educate yourself. Develop respect for women and learn to take care of old people and children. Once you have learned the niceties of self-rule, then only you would make yourself entitled to be a part of a democratic country. Last, but not the least; you must give more than what you receive and do more than you are expected to do.